Friday, 29 July 2011

There will be a Rotterdam post, but I'm afraid probably not for a few days. These are busy times, for both good and bad reasons. In the meantime, here's a sign I saw in a zoo recently. You'll probably have to click it to read it.

'A number of methods to find out where the cheetah live'. Impressive. Including method 1: Seeing where the cheetah are; and method 4: asking if anyone else have seen where the cheetah are.

Friday, 22 July 2011

Ottery St Mary is now available here. I have to say, I do like this episode. It might be my favourite this series, or that might be St. Petersburg; but for very different reasons. This one I like because it's silly and cheerful and fun; and for most of it, everyone gets on rather well and enjoys one another's company. You can't do that often in a sitcom, or it gets dull, but it's nice once in a while.

In the first draft, it was designed to be the counterpart to Johannesburg, in which the cast are for half the episode split Douglas and Carolyn / Martin and Arthur. And of course there are several episodes where the split is Martin and Douglas / Carolyn and Arthur; so I thought I'd try the other possible pairing. The version I wrote worked fine, but it just seemed such a shame to do a 'Martin's van' episode without Martin in the van. So I took it apart, rewrote the road trip section to include Martin, and came up with a new plot for Carolyn. Then, at the recordings, this was the other episode recorded the week Benedict was ill. However, the cast all very kindly agreed to re-do the Martin scenes at the end of the third recording - and Tom very very kindly agreed to perform Martin on stage, even though he knew it wouldn't go out. Which meant I got to hear the script performed as if for real, in front of an audience... but with two weeks to improve it with rewrites and cuts, which was an incredible luxury. So, this has had more rewriting time than any other episode, and not coincidentally it's one of my favourites. You just cannot rewrite too much. Even now I'd like another pass at it - why on earth did I make Herc's sports car green rather than yellow? Idiot.

Another rewriting story - the design of the Herc / Carolyn story was always that they would alternate having the upper hand in their skirmishes, and first time round this meant when it got to the sheep scene, it needed to be Carolyn with the phobia, and Herc mocking her. Which didn't work at all - Carolyn seemed out-of-character, and Herc seemed bullying and unpleasant. But when I finally realised what the problem was, and restructured it so they could swap, it worked fine. Interesting that even with a female character you've spent two and a half series establishing as strong to the point of fearsome; 'woman is scared of sheep' just fundamentally isn't as funny as 'man is scared of sheep'.

When I was first creating the show, in 2005 (!), my working title for MJN Air was 'Icarus Airways'. Once Carolyn's character became more developed, I realised reluctantly she'd never be daft enough to call it that. But I know a man who would...

For the origin of the otter-imagining game, have a look at this blog post I wrote three years ago. I like that I titled it 'I am supposed to be writing a sitcom.' Little did I know I was bunking off writing Cabin Pressure series one to write a bit of Cabin Pressure series three.

I like that, although I know 99.9% of the audience wouldn't remember, Snoopadoop's name (and Carolyn's soppiness about her) is actually mentioned in the very first episode. Snoopadoop, by the way, is named after a poodle puppy I met at the Edinburgh festival in about 2004, and so whom is probably still around. So if you're here because you got bored and googled your dog's name, hello, and thank you!

This week's 'deleted scene' is from near the end, when they're at Ottery St Mary's (non-existant, by the way) airfield, and realise the pub is a mile away:

DOUGLAS:...yes, yes, alright. Let’s start pushing.

MARTIN:Thank you so much! Except of course... I can’t really push. Because of my ankle?

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

Just a quick-ish and late one on Newcastle (available here ), I'm afraid, because real life is still in the way a bit.

Every series, it seems, one episode causes me more trouble and hair-tearing than any two and a half of the others combined. In series one it was Cremona - my God that plot took some wrestling to get down to twenty-eight minutes. In series two it was Kuala Lumpur, which if I'm honest I still don't think I ever got quite right. This series it was Newcastle. And it's always the same problem: way, way too much plot, resulting in a nine thousand word monster of a draft which I somehow have to boil down to about 5,600. I didn't quite manage it with Newcastle, either, so there's a lot on the cutting room floor this week. What annoys me about it is that I realised when it was too late that actually, the problem was that there's the material for two perfectly good episodes in it - one based around flying Herc and Linda; and one based around Martin getting on the wrong side of an engineer. Apart from anything else, it's a shame to cram three such brilliant guest stars all into one episode, rather than giving them room to breathe. Oh well. I'll know better next time. (I won't.) This is all sounding very negative, isn't it - I still really like the episode.

And then, of course, the morning before the recording, we got the call from Benedict's agent saying she was terribly sorry, but he simply had no voice left at all (you can hear he's suffering a bit in some of the other episodes). So hooray for the tremendous Tom Goodman-Hill, who I think does a terrific job of being a Martin that's not just a pale copy of Benedict's, but on the other hand doesn't feel like a jarring leap away from his. And hooray for Benedict, Roger and Stephanie for very decently agreeing to re-record Martin's scenes in the next episode, Ottery St. Mary, so that Ben-Martin could appear in five out of the six episodes. Isn't everyone great? Arthur's right: other people are brilliant.

Speaking of Arthur, here's some more of his Monopoly game:

CAROLYN:He also once did a deal whereby he gave Martin Mayfair, so long as he was also allowed to give him the Electric Company.

ARTHUR:Well, I kept having to times things by four! That’s not fun, that’s maths! Anyway, I’m still playing!

CAROLYN:Of course you are. Indeed it’s your go.

FX:DICE THROWN

ARTHUR:Twenty-forth go in jail. Are you sure I can’t just pay fifty pounds to get out, Herc?

HERC:You wanted to be the little dog.

ARTHUR:I’m always the little dog.

HERC:And everyone knows the little dog can’t pay to get out of prison. You just have to wait till you get a Get Out Of Jail Free card.

Monday, 11 July 2011

This is a transcript of a piece I recorded for The Now Show on Thursday 7th July, the day it was announced the News of the World was closing. For the full show, go here. This transcript includes material which was recorded but not broadcast, for reasons of time.

Corrections:

1) It's not News International itself that is seeking to own BSkyB, rather its parent company News Corporation.

2) The government has to decide whether the takeover threatens media plurality; Ofcom alone will judge whether News Corps are 'fit and proper persons'.

It seems more honest to put these corrections here rather than changing the text of the piece. I regret the errors, but don't believe either materially affect the argument I'm making.

JOHN So. Does anyone remember the News of the World? No? It was a newspaper that was around when I was a kid, and also an adult. Tabloid, came out on a Sunday, a bit like the Sun on Sunday, but obviously totally different and separate and not the same at all. Anyway, I seem to remember it had to close in the end, after some scandal about hacking a murdered schoolgirl’s phone. And it was a News International paper, I think, so it’s a good job it’s not around this week, when the Government and Ofcom have to decide if News International are ‘fit and proper persons’ to own BSkyB! That would be awful for them! But it’s not, it’s closed and over and done with and finished and shut and in the past and not relevant to anything any more. Which is lucky.

Now, I’m aware, as I start this piece, of something Tom Lehrer once said about protest song singers: that it takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house and come out in favour of the things everyone else is against, like peace and love and brotherhood and so on. I feel a bit like that now; here I am on Radio Four to register my controversial view that hacking and / or deleting messages from the phones of murder victims, terrorism survivors or dead soldiers is... a bit off. I mean, that is very much my opinion, but I fear I might be preaching to the choir. And what a choir it is! From Ed Miliband...

MILLIBAND Immoral!

JOHN …David Cameron…

CAMERON Disgusting!

JOHN ...Rebekah Brooks...

BROOKS Disgraceful!

JOHN ...to Rupert Murdoch

MURDOCH Deplorable!

JOHN ...it seemed this week as if no-one had a good word to say for the practice of eavesdropping on murder victims. Honestly, we’re all so united in hating it, it’s surprising really it ever happened. No-one seems in favour, not even Rebekah Brooks, whom I assume as editor of the paper that paid for it, must have…? No! No, apparently I’m wrong. She’s totally unconnected with it, and didn’t know, and didn’t see, and no-one told her, and she was on holiday, and anyway she had a different name then so it doesn’t count. In fact, she went to far as to say to her employees:

BROOKS I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.’

JOHN So, there you go - it is inconceivable. It actually cannot be conceived. The imagination, faced with the challenge of inventing some kind of madcap fictional world in which Rebekah Brooks knew where a story in the paper she edited came from, just gives up. It’s like trying to imagine an undiscovered colour or five dimensional space. We can demonstrate this now, actually. Try, just as a thought experiment, try to conceive that Rebekah Brooks, as her former employee Paul McMullan maintains, knew full well that Glenn Mulcaire was illegally hacking phones. [PAUSE] Any luck? No, me neither. Interesting, by the way, that ‘I hope you realise it is inconceivable that I knew…’ is not quite the same, legally, as ‘I didn’t know’. And of course that’s not all - it’s also being alleged that News International have in the past paid the police for information. Presumably Rebekah Brooks thinks this is inconceivable as well. Certainly, when asked about it by Chris Bryant MP in 2003, she was less then candid. This is what she said:

BROOKS We have paid the police for information in the past.

JOHN Oh, I’m sorry, I meant she was totally candid. She told the government select committee that that illegal act is what she did. Just to remind you, the government have to decide if News International are fit and proper persons to own BSkyB. Now, to be fair, Andy Coulson was also there, and he leapt in to clarify:

COULSON We operate within the code and within the law.

JOHN He said. Oh, within the law? Phew! That’s a relief! But Chris Bryant is a bit slow, and said:

BRYANT It’s illegal for police officers to receive payments.

JOHN To which Coulson replied:

COULSON No no no, we don’t- As I said, within the law.

JOHN Yes, he said it was within the law! Weren’t you listening, Chris Bryant? It can’t be illegal if it was done within the law, by definition. You’re thinking of those illegal police bribes everyone else does, this was a police bribe within the law. They’re fine! Out of interest, though, I wonder which law it was done within? Because obviously it wasn’t done within the hundred year old law against making or accepting a payment to a police officer for information collected in the course of duty. It must be within some other law, maybe that one about abating a smoky chimney.

Anyway, something, the whole of the choir agree, was deeply wrong at the News of the World - you remember, the ancient and historical paper which used to exist once, but doesn’t now, so that’s fine - under the editorship of Rebekah Wade. And who better to investigate it than the chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks? No-one. No-one knows Rebekah Wade better than Rebekah Brooks. They go way back. In the words of comedy henchman Simon Greenberg, when Jon Snow asked how she could investigate herself:

GREENBERG When we’ve got the facts, we’ll investigate how that can be possible.

JOHN It’s as simple as that. She’ll investigate, get the facts, and when she’s got the facts, she can investigate how it’s possible for her to have investigated them. I mean, it certainly saves on manpower. I just worry she’s working too hard, poor girl. Because she’s going to have to ask herself some tough questions, really rake herself over the coals. Naturally, at first she’ll try to evade herself, but she knows all her tricks, and once she sees she means business, she’ll crack, and before long she’ll tell her everything she knows about what she did, and she’ll listen very carefully, and write it all down in a little book.

The only problem is, there surely can’t be anything to discover, because after all News International looked into it two years ago when the first Guardian reports came out, and they told the PCC quite clearly that these were the actions of one rogue reporter, and there was no evidence anyone else at the News of the World was involved in phone hacking. (By the way, the government have to decide if News International are fit and proper persons to run BSkyB.) And if there’s no evidence, there’s no evidence. I mean, where else could they look? Well, comedy henchman Greenberg had an answer to that too, this time on the Today Programme, where he was at pains to stress that News International was:

GREENBERG ‘in a fully co-operative mode with the police, as we have been since January.’

JOHN Is it me, or doesn’t that slightly raises the question of what sort of mode they were in before January? Although, to be fair, it is beginning to sound like their relationship with the police has for some time been very co-operative… almost to a fault. Anyway, Mr Greenberg has had a bright idea where to look for this evidence which News International were adamant in 2009 did not exist. He said:

GREENBERG ‘The Milly Dowler information, that’s something we weren’t aware of, we obviously want to see what information we might have in our archives’

JOHN Oh, the archives! Of course! The place where we put the records of stuff that happened in the past! Now you mention it, that’s the very place to look! The dusty old News International archives, [ANCIENT ARCHIVIST VOICE] wherein we repose the huge leather-bound volumes of sent emails, which can in no way [VOICE OUT] be searched electronically for the word ‘Dowler’ or ‘hack into the murdered girl’s phone’, but must instead [VOICE BACK IN] be searched very very slowly by the senior archivist with his trusty magnifying glass.

And they’d better do a good job, because if they don’t, they will face the wrath of the mighty Press Complaints Commission, which has already done so much to prevent this situation, and which is now prepared to savage them as only a voluntary self-regulating body with no legal powers or sanctions can. Their chairman, Lady Buscombe, has been all over the place this week, defending the PCC from charges that they have basically the same powers and influence as Father Ted and Dougal outside that cinema.

TED Down with this sort of thing!

DOUGAL Careful now!

JOHNWhen Andrew Neill asked her to name ‘one useful thing’ she’d done since the scandal broke, she replied that she had ‘demanded to see all the proprietors’. Which ought to do the trick nicely, if, as I assume, the proprietors all share a debilitating phobia of seeing Lady Buscombe. Though of course if they do… they can just refuse to see her. Whereas Ofcom, the statuary regulator that controls broadcast media, can impose heavy fines, or even refuse to grant a licence to a broadcaster if it feels they are not fit and proper persons to have one. Something that’s being decided right now, as it happens, about News International, as I may have said.

But anyway, isn’t it all academic now? The News of the World has gone! We won! They made the supreme sacrifice and killed it off. Yeah, they have. In other, unrelated news, here’s what Rebekah Brooks said on the 28th June this year, announcing the appointment of Richard Caseby in the new role of managing editor of the Sun and the News of the World.

BROOKS We will take a comprehensive look at where there is common ground across our titles. Where there is common ground we will find ways of implementing efficiencies and, where appropriate, we will find ways of introducing seven day working.

JOHN ‘Seven day working’. Now, a cynic might read that as evidence News International were already planning to merge the papers at least a fortnight before this happened, and this announcement is just disguising a pre-made decision as sack-cloth and ashes, whilst clearing the way for the launch of a Sun on Sunday with no baggage, in which all the advertisers they’ve lost this week can cheerfully re-advertise with clean hands. Not to say that this isn’t a huge deal, with the loss of hundreds of jobs - though of course largely the jobs of people who had nothing to do with phone-hacking, rather than the job of, say, to pick an example at random, Rebekah Brooks; who also had nothing to do with it, as we’ve established, but perhaps in a slightly more pointed way than some. What it certainly doesn’t prove is that News International are very very sorry. What it proves is that they really, really want BSkyB.

JOHN So, there we are, I’ve stood in front of a Radio Four audience and told them hacking into the phones of murdered children isn’t very nice, and nor is Rebekah Brooks, which are two things you all thought already. What was the point of that? Well, actually, this time, I think there is a point. I often complain about how politicians endlessly go on about ‘listening to the people’, as if the people always speak with one voice, and as if the politicians hadn’t already made up their minds what they were going to hear.

But this time is different, and unusual, and important. The stark, undeniable wrongness of the Milly Dowler case has unified our voice, and this time they really are listening to us. Most of the people concerned, broadly speaking, didn’t and don’t want to do anything about this. Milliband didn’t want to make an enemy of Murdoch; Cameron didn’t want to have an inquiry; James Murdoch didn’t want to end the News of the World just yet, though he would have done soon. But they all changed their minds this week, because we shouted louder than they expected. And now, they’re waiting to see if that’s enough. Are we going to take the nice neat ending to the story that’s been offered to us, and go on to the next shiny thing nest week, or do they actually have to do something significant?

So this is a moment in time where I think there is actually a point to being like Tom Lehrer’s protest singer, and loudly making a fuss about what we already know we all believe, because people who didn’t think we actually cared that much are listening. So, let’s keep it up. Let’s not get distracted. Let’s not fall for the ‘The paper you hated… has gone! Behold the totally fresh and uncontaminated Sun on Sunday!’ trick. Let’s keep signing petitions, keep pestering advertisers. Let’s remember no-one has denied Milly Dowler’s messages were listened to and deleted by a man paid by News International, let’s not forget the chief exec of that company has told the House of Commons she paid the police for information; let’s chip in with our helpful opinions about whether she and it are therefore fit and proper persons to own the largest commercial broadcaster in the country. Let’s keep the pressure up, keep the chorus of disapproval going, because right now we have a rare and genuine opportunity to tell the people who influence our lives, elected or not, what sort of media ethics we’re prepared to tolerate, right now we can make a difference, right now - if we don’t lose our focus- the choir get to preach back.

Saturday, 9 July 2011

Paris, episode two of Cabin Pressure, is available here for the next six days. Massive spoilers for this episode follow. Don't read on if you haven't heard the episode, and think you might want to.

First, to give those guys time to leave, thank you so much for all the nice comments about my piece about the News of the World on The Now Show this week. I cannot think of anything I've ever written that's got quite such a reaction. Tomorrow, outrageously big-headed though it seems, I'll put a transcript of it up here, including some of the bits that didn't make the edit.

But back in Paris, or at least on the way to Paris... did I fool you? I hope so. I love whodunnits, they are my trashy fiction of choice, especially the 'golden age' thirties and forties ones, and I've wanted to do a whodunnit episode of Cabin Pressure for ages - even before Captain Crieff took on his secret identity on BBC1. For a long time, this episode had a totally different plot and solution, and was all about Mr Alyakhin (from the Christmas special) and his party of rich yacht buyers losing some sort of priceless jewel on a trip to look at massive yachts in Palma. But the problem was, I always knew I wanted Douglas to be the culprit; and I couldn't quite believe in him actually stealing a valuable thing from a passenger, however unpleasant I made them. And then I remembered Birling Day, which meant I could also bring back Geoffrey Whitehead as a guest star, who is simply one of my favourite comedy actors.

I decided early on there would be no mention of the S word, or indeed the H word, still less the 'E, MDW' phrase. But that didn't mean there couldn't be, maybe, a couple of sly references... Benedict was an incredibly good sport about it all, especially given the audience was full of Sherlock fans. Though he did give me quite a look at the first read-through when we got to 'Wow, Skip! You're just like Miss Marple!'

A few people have asked me about Martin's money situation at the end - I did explain this in the script at one point, but as always I had to cut loads to fit it to 28 minutes. Anyway, yes, it's possible that Martin does not have to tell Carolyn that he lost the bet, given that Birling got the whisky in the end, and can claim his hundred pounds off her. However, personally, I think Martin's too decent; Douglas too boastful; and Arthur too incapable of lying for her not to find out the truth pretty quickly. However, Martin gets a thousand pound pearl off Birling, plus a fifty pound tip, so even if he pays up to Carolyn he comes out £950 ahead on the trip, which should buy him plenty of baked potatoes. So I think it's a happy ending for him.

Somebody asked why Carolyn opened the bottle at the start - so that she (and we) could be absolutely certain it was the genuine whisky seconds before being put into Martin's hands. After that, only Martin and Arthur touch the bottle before it's poured.

I'm very pleased a couple of people said they thought the guilty party was Mr Birling's wife. That's absolutely what she was there for. I hoped a lot of people trying to guess the solution would hit upon the Carolyn solution Douglas tries to sell Martin, and that others, if I introduced one other character early on, who was studiously never accused by anyone, would go for them. But really, of course, once Douglas has said he's going to steal a bottle of whisky... it always had to be Douglas. Hence this bit of dialogue which didn't make the edit:

MARTIN Stop doing that! I admit you have a sort of underhand sneakiness…

DOUGLAS A brilliant flair for strategy and subterfuge.

MARTIN ...at your disposal, but what I have that you don’t, and which you always underestimate, is that I am meticulous and methodical. And it seems to me that so long as I make sure there is never even a moment on the trip when I’m not watching you, or the whisky, or both; then however clever you are, I can’t see how you’ll take it.

DOUGLAS Of course you can’t ‘see how I’ll take it’! I’d hardly be a criminal mastermind if you could ‘see how I’ll take it’! But I will take it.

Friday, 8 July 2011

Just a quick one, to say there's plenty of me on Radio Four today. Perhaps too much. New Cabin Pressure at 11:30, featuring the return of the mighty and hilarious Geoffrey Whitehead as Mr Birling; and then on the Now Show at 6:30 I get to express my important opinions about the News of the World hacking Milly Dowler's phone. Sneak preview: I'm broadly against it.

Family stuff to do today, so I'll put my 'Paris' post up tomorrow. Hope you enjoy it!

Monday, 4 July 2011

This is Sir Robert Watson-Watt, who described himself in his autobiography as:

'a sixth rate mathematician, a second rate physicist, a second rate engineer, and a bit of a meteorologist, something of a journalist, a plausible salesman of ideas, interested in politics, liking to believe there is some poetry in my physics, some physics in my politics.'

He may have been a little modest there. Watson-Watt is generally credited with the invention of radar; and certainly with the system of detecting aircraft with it, and the chain of radar stations on the south coast of England, which is often cited as the reason the British won the Battle of Britain; which in turn is often cited as the turning point of the war. Imagine what he might have achieved if he'd been a fifth rate mathematician...

Anyway, I bring him to your attention today because later in life he was stopped for speeding by a policeman, using a radar gun. I think it's safe to say the irony was not lost on him.

ROUGH JUSTICE

by Robert Watson-Watt.

Pity Sir Robert Watson-Watt,
strange target of this radar plot

And thus, with others I can mention,
victim of his own invention.

His magical all-seeing eye
enabled cloud-bound planes to fly

but now by some ironic twist
it spots the speeding motorist

and bites, no doubt with legal wit,
the hand that once created it.

And so, all you courageous boffins
who may be nailing up your coffins,
(particularly those whose mission
is in the realm of nuclear fission)
pause and mull fate’s counter plot
and learn with us what’s Watson-Watt.

Friday, 1 July 2011

Qikiqtarjuaq, the first episode in the new series of Cabin Pressure, is available here for the next seven days.

It wasn't written as the first episode, but unfortunately Benedict Cumberbatch lost his voice for the recording of the one that was meant to be first. And brilliant though Tom Goodman-Hill was in the part, it seemed odd to begin the series without one of the usual cast, so we tinkered with the episode order. It was between this one and Paris for episode one, but I think this is a more typical 'in the plane, taking some people to a place' story, which is a useful way to begin. Also, because Martin and Douglas fall out, their relationship in this episode is more like the prickly one they had in series one, rather than the increasingly friendly one in series two, which again I like as a way of introducing new listeners to what is supposed to be funny about the sit of this com.

Martin's polar bear lecture is one of the very few times a whole piece has just come to me quite naturally and fluently. I usually find writing very difficult indeed - every sentence has to be dragged out of me, and then endlessly rewritten. But this time I was out walking along the canal, trying to think of ideas for the speech to write up when I got home, and instead I ended up practically dictating it into my phone, comedy French accent and all. Even when I hear it now, I can picture where along the canal I was when I said that bit. Here's an extra couple of lines from it that we had to cut in the edit to fit:

DOUGLAS: Remind me, who was it the French were fighting in Alaska?

MARTIN: ... Ah'm afraid zis information is still classified.

Oh, and doing the credits in the accent was entirely Benedict's idea! I love it, especially 'D'veed Tylar'